Wunderkind

Grozni's fiction debut (after his memoir, Turtle Feet) is a familiarly bleak tale of life at a music school behind the Iron Curtain. Being a student at the Music School for the Gifted in Sofia, Bulgaria, means spending days practicing Prokofiev and digesting Party doctrine under the watchful eyes of animal-nicknamed teachers, from the sympathetic Ladybug who teaches piano to the imperious principal, the Owl. Narrator Konstantin is a skilled 15-year-old pianist with incredible potential, but his fiery temperament is ill-suited to playing the Communist cog. He, along with his friends Irena, a violinist, and Alexander, an opera singer, form the core of a band of rebels who lash out with pranks and stunts as they struggle with their own teenage fears and desires. But Konstantin has a chance to escape, if only he can impress the right people at an upcoming Chopin competition%E2%80%94and survive until then, particularly after a prank that goes too far. Grozni's writing is colorful and strong%E2%80%94his passages describing music and the musical temperament particularly so%E2%80%94but the effect soon becomes one of the same chord being struck over and over, leaving the reader yearning for more subtlety of expression. (Sept.)